NEAL CAREY is a New York street kid turned bookworm and reluctant sometime-P.I. Living on his own after the death of his mother, Neal wasn't exactly raised by wolves, but it was close. The young street rat was apprehended by one Joe Graham when he tried to pick Joe's pocket. Joe decided to to take Neal off the streets and raise him.

Imagine Dicken's Fagin as a one-armed sourpuss private eye and you'd have Joe Graham. He decided to recreate Neal in his own image, more or less, and bring him into the family business, as it were. From that day on, Neal was a trainee gumshoe for a special department of a very private bank simply called "The Friends of the Family." The bank offers its very select (and very wealthy) clients absolute privacy and complete discretion, not to mention a little discreet help on the side "with those little problems of life that couldn't be settled with just plain cash," such as finding a missing daughter, or a second set of books, or a runaway wife or whatever. In other words, when the going gets tough for the very rich and powerful, the very rich and powerful can count on the aid of Joe and Neal. All vaguely reminiscent of the late Lawrence sanders, if you ask me, except for one thing. If Neal had his druthers, he'd be buried deep in his beloved books, studying 18th century literature, working hard for his Masters. In a show of gratitude for past services rendered, the "Bank' has been sponsoring Neal's studies, but something always seems to pop up that requires Neal's talents, and our idealistic, slightly wimpish young Galahad is dragged kicking and screaming back to work. Like they say, it's always something.

Set in the 1970's, and ranging all over the world, (San Francisco, Yorkshire, New York, China, London), there's a lot of potential in this series. Neal's a likeable, if unlikely, detective. And the father/son riff between Joe and Neal is a breath of fresh air. Bookish, a bit naive, usually in over his head, Neal currenly lives in a sleepy little Yorkshire village in England, where he's working away on his Masters, but trouble never seems to be more than a phone call away.